


blame

by trash_devil



Category: BlazBlue
Genre: Gen, and they lie to each other for a bit, i honestly dont know what to tag this as, tsubaki thinks about jin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 18:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19470019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_devil/pseuds/trash_devil
Summary: she had to admire it a little, the audacity of his lie.





	blame

It was always tempting to categorize things. To split Jin into Before and After.

_Before,_ when he was not quite so cold and nowhere near as cruel. When she fell helplessly in love with his rare smiles, his sense of duty, his unique brand of gentleness hidden behind layers of sarcasm and sharp politeness. 

She remembered the day she finally worked up the nerve to tell him how she felt. He got a distant look in his eyes and asked quietly, “Do you?”

She hadn’t known what to say to that.  
How often she hadn’t known what to say.

Then, _After._ After, Jin never smiled. That distant look was always there, except when it sharpened with an intensity that frightened her.   
His obsession changed him. He stopped sleeping, stopped eating, grew gaunt and pale and sickly. When she spoke to him, his voice seemed far away. He avoided her gaze.

On the rare occasion their eyes met, she could see nothing in him but hate, vast and directionless, consuming his every other emotion one by one.

Before and After what?  
She wanted to say, “Ragna.” 

She _wanted_ to.

It was tempting to pin the blame on a single person, a single event.   
But how incorrect it would be.

There had always been Ragna. If you peeled back the layers of time, let them drift away like discarded skin, Ragna would still be there. 

The guilt was on her hands as much as his. They were all to blame. 

Where did it all go wrong? Where did she miss her chance to take Jin by the hand, douse the flames of his madness and drag him back to her-

“Tsubaki.”  
A cold grip tightened around her fingers. She looked up.  
His gaze met hers for a split second, then darted away. “You seemed… troubled,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on the pattern of the tiles.  
“... Don’t worry, Jin-nii-sama,” she reassured him, “I’m alright.”  
She managed to hold his gaze for a little longer this time. A question perched on his lips. Tsubaki wanted him to ask it so badly it surprised her.

He didn’t. He never did. His hold on her hand weakened.

_Please,_ she wanted to say to him. Please what? She didn’t know.

Her fingers curled around his hand when he started to pull away. “How about you? Are you doing okay?”

His green eyes widened a little. At times like these, he seemed so human. She could almost forget that this was the exception and not the rule.

She could almost forget that eventually all trace of normalcy would vanish. He would stand, suddenly frantic, ice blooming from where his feet touched the floor, the name in his mouth not hers but a pathetic cry for his brother.

“... I’m fine,” he said after a moment.

Tsubaki looked at him. Exhaustion drew dark circles under his eyes. A sheen of feverish sweat matted his bangs to his forehead in soft snarls of blond. He smelled like blood and rot and something else, sharp and unplaceable.

And she had to admire it a little, the audacity of his lie.


End file.
